To whose deep flood, my song is but a rill,—
All, great and small, hear the same chorus still.
Read the old rotting magazines and see
The very venom that they void on me;
The arsenal where roving malice meets
The rusty darts that stung the heart of Keats.
Vile innuendo, and malignant sneer,
Blanche, Tray, and Sweetheart, hardly changed are here.
The lowest place amid the minstrel throng
Is all I claim; in the full tide of song